“You’ve been working so hard,” he said. “You’re determined, I’ll give you that.”
She was determined. She’d had to be, or that experience with Jasper would’ve destroyed her. The memory was always there, a constant threat to her peace of mind. Maybe that was why she fought so hard every day. Her parents didn’t realize it, but she was hanging on by a very thin thread. If she didn’t continue to march forward, and take more ground in her battle against psychopathy, she was afraid she’d backslide into the broken person she’d been right after the incident, despite all the counseling and hard-won self-healing.
Besides, what else was there for her except work? She couldn’t meet a nice man, fall in love and start a family, like other women. Jasper had seen to that when he’d destroyed her trust of the opposite sex.
“It’s taken a tremendous amount of effort to make HH a reality,” she said, but even ‘tremendous’ seemed like an understatement. Not only had it been necessary to sell the need for such study to the right politicians, she’d had to petition for the funding, research the psychopaths who might be able to teach her the most, and recruit a mental health team she believed in and who were willing to follow her into the wilderness—literally and figuratively. And, while she did all of that, she’d had to prepare for the move by closing down her psychiatry practice, putting her condo up for sale and having a bungalow built on the outskirts of Hilltop so that she’d have a comfortable place to live when she arrived.
Fortunately, the bungalow was ready and waiting for her. She’d stayed in it and furnished it when she went back to hire the warden who would be running the prison side of the facility. She was just waiting to have the alarm system installed, and the contractor she’d hired had promised it would be in before she moved there.
“We’ll help you pack, of course, but”—her father pulled through the gate surrounding her complex—“what are you going to do if the condo doesn’t sell before you have to go?”
“I’ll have no choice except to leave it empty and hope my Realtor will be able to sell it after I’m gone.”
“I guess that type of thing isn’t too uncommon.” He parked in a visitor’s stall. “Let us know if we can do anything to help.”
Although she wasn’t excited about covering two house payments, she earned enough to make it possible, so she refused to stress over the condo. Part of her was tempted to rent it out, anyway, in case she didn’t like Alaska and wanted to come back. But she was afraid that having a bail-out plan might make it too easy to give up. “I will. Thank you. I appreciate the support.”
“What’s the latest word?” Grant asked, his hand on the door latch. “When will Hanover House be finished?”
She released her seat belt. “We’re hoping to open November 1st.”
“You’re going back so early, I thought that must’ve changed.”
“No. I need to help the warden staff the place, and that’ll take a while. I plan to be fully prepared when my subjects arrive.”
“You mean the murderers, rapists and con-artists who are currently incarcerated elsewhere,” her mother supplied.
At the bitterness in Lara’s voice, her father reached over to rest his hand on her mother’s knee. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but he didn’t say anything and neither did Evelyn. Thank goodness the “fun” trip with her mother was over. Now she just needed to unwind and get some sleep before she had to start another day with an endless list of details.
“I’ll get your luggage,” Grant said and climbed out.
Evelyn stared up at the light shining through her living room window. She left it on whenever she was gone. Because she was so eager to get a break from her mother, it beckoned to her, promised solitude. But the thought of being alone also made her uneasy. As cautious as she tried to be about keeping her personal information private, she couldn’t live completely off the grid and continue to be a fully-functioning individual. She wouldn’t sacrifice a normal life for anything, not even safety. That meant there would always be some way for the men she worked with to find her.
Only a few years ago, an ex-con she’d once evaluated for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections had broken in and nearly raped her before her neighbor heard all the thumps, bumps and cries. The police arrived in time, but Carl Jenkins, her attacker, would never reveal how he’d come by her address. His silence on the subject sometimes made her wonder if she’d overlooked something obvious, something Jasper could easily dig up...
Stop. That was the paranoia talking. Jasper had to be living abroad. After all the money she’d spent on private investigators, and the many, many times she’d followed up with the Boston Police Department, demanding they do everything possible, they would’ve found him by now if he was in America.